First Drop

Eight

The amount of police cars cruising about in Daytona Beach soon convinced me the Kawasaki was going to have to go. Trey and I rode back down the strip until we came across a big hotel with an underground car park and ducked into there.

I found a quiet corner next to the laundry room and that’s where we left it. I retrieved my Swiss Army knife from the ruined ignition and gave the bike a last pat on its battered tank. It had served us well and I was sorry to see the back of it.

As an extra precaution, I unscrewed the rear numberplate and took that away with us, just to slow down the identification a little. I dropped the pressed ali plate down the first storm drain at the side of the road we came to. It must rain like hell in Florida, because they had openings in the gutter that would have been big enough to lose a medium-sized dog into.

***

The prospect of sleeping on a beach, in March, without any camping equipment or a sleeping bag was not one that filled me with excited anticipation.

Still, at least it was Florida. The last time I’d been forced to rough it like that had been doing Escape and Evasion exercises in the army. The Brecon Beacons at the same time of year is a whole different ballgame.

On foot now, we crossed over the highway and walked along the strip until we came to one of the big surf shops that was still open.

“What do we want from here?” Trey asked.

“Beach towels,” I said. “They may not be quite up to blanket level, but at least they’ll keep the sand out.”

I picked up a couple of what felt like the warmest, but Trey balked at the prospect of owning anything with twee cartoon mermaids on the front so I let him choose his own. The one he came back with was a leftover from the previous year’s bike week and looked half as thick as my choice. I didn’t have the energy to argue with him. There was only a desultory crowd as we went to the check-out, but the cashier was looking jumpy.

When I followed his gaze I noticed a couple of teenagers, probably a year or two older than Trey, hanging around by the surfing gear. One was a skinny kid, wearing a bandana and an open shirt over a white vest that showed off his concave chest. His jeans were slung fashionably low, just about clinging on round his protruding hip bones and showing off two inches of underpant over the top. He walked like he thought he was hot stuff.

His mate was shorter and fatter, still trying to shake off his adolescent puppy fat and look like a mean dog instead. It came over as clumsy bluster. The thin kid was the dangerous one. Neither of them looked like they were about to splash out on a new Lightwave longboard.

I realised when I dug in my pockets that I’d let Trey have the last twenty to pay for the fuel. I had to break one of the hundred dollar bills Keith had given me, which I would rather have done without the audience, particularly not as the cashier counted my change out loud into my hand. The only good thing was that he was so busy watching what was going on behind me he didn’t spend long looking at my face.

When we walked out of the shop and back across the road, I checked behind us regularly but as far as I could see there was nobody following.

Beach ramps were spaced at regular intervals along South Atlantic Avenue. According to the signs, if you paid your fee you were invited to take your car down there and ride up and down the sand all day. It sounded like an invitation to major corrosion problems to me. The ramps were gated off at night but it was only to stop traffic. Trey and I walked past them, carrying our towels, and stepped out onto the soft sand.

It wasn’t truly dark out there. There was too sharp a moon, caught and reflected by the white water of every breaker. The navigation lights of a big commercial ship far out to sea shimmered towards us.

Moving heavily through the dry sand, we worked our way further down the beach. Someone had gathered enough odds and ends of driftwood together to light a campfire, in spite of the notices strictly forbidding such an activity.

The night had taken on a chill now and it would have been tempting to stay near the fire, but I didn’t want to be around if the cops arrived to tell them to put it out. We skirted round the edge and kept going.

The flames momentarily wiped out my night vision, so I didn’t see the skinny kid from the surf shop until he was a few metres in front of us. He was tight and wired. There was a cheap knife in his right hand.

“Gimme the money,” he said. No wasted time on banter.

I glanced over my shoulder to check Trey’s position and saw that the fat teen was now behind us. His hands were empty. I turned back to the skinny kid. The glint and shadow from the fire shifted satanically over his face.

“We don’t have much,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me, bitch,” the skinny kid said, raising the knife. “You got plenty.”

Better to buy our way out of trouble if we could. I dropped the towel at my feet and reached into my pocket. I separated a couple of notes from the fold with my fingers and pulled my hand out. I held the money out to the side of me, wanting to make him work for it.

The skinny kid smiled unpleasantly and nodded to his companion, who came forwards just far enough to grab the money, then retreated again to check his booty. It was obviously a system they’d used before.

“It’s just a coupla twenties,” he said, disgusted.

The skinny kid’s smile became a sneer.

“What kinda fool d’you take me for?” he spat. He took a couple of steps forward, rolling the knife almost delicately between his fingertips so the blade flashed in the light. “Gimme the rest.”

“No,” I said.

He stopped. For a moment the only noise was the steady crash of the waves on the shoreline and the crackle of the fire behind me.

Trey had moved up to my right shoulder but I was under no illusions that he was about to act as my wing man if it came down to it. His body was rigid, jaw clenched. When our eyes met he let his slide meaningfully down towards my back where the SIG was lying under my shirt. I gave the briefest shake of my head and turned back to the kid with the knife.

I sighed. “Look,” I said. “I’ve had a very shitty day. I’m tired. You’ve just made twenty dollars each for ten seconds’ work. Be smart and quit while you’re ahead.”

He bared his teeth. “Wise-ass, huh? Always heard you English chicks didn’t put up much of a fight,” he said and something else was gleaming in his eyes now. “Always heard as how it was like fucking a corpse. Looks like we’ve found ourselves a fighter, huh?”

My heart accelerated, starting to flood my system with oxygenated blood. I could hear the echo of it thundering in my ears. “You have no idea,” I murmured.

He came at me fast then, leading with the blade. I went to meet him, taking a couple of quick steps forwards to keep him away from Trey. I blocked his knife hand with my left forearm and snaked my arm around his so his wrist was locked up under my armpit.

He jerked at his trapped arm and when he couldn’t immediately free it he tried to launch a wild left-hand punch instead. I tightened my grip, jamming my fist up under his elbow to force the joint straight beyond its limit. He gave a surprised grunt, the pain preventing him from turning far enough towards me for the blow to connect. I steadied him for a moment, then turned my body in towards his and jerked my knee up into his groin, quick and hard. The fight was over.

The skinny kid’s eyes bulged as his legs gave way and he began to gag. I loosened up enough to let him fall to his knees, putting some twist onto his right hand as he went down to prise the knife out of his fingers.

The fat kid hadn’t moved an inch while all this had gone on. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open.

“Beat it,” I told him.

For a moment he didn’t move. I hefted the knife one-handed, tossed it up and caught it by the blade, then brought my hand back like I was a circus knife thrower going for the big finale. “Now!” I said.

The fat kid didn’t wait to see how good my aim was. He gave a kind of startled squeak, hurled the twenty-dollar notes down onto the sand, and then he turned and ran.

I let go of the skinny kid’s arm and stepped away from him, but I needn’t have worried he was about to launch a counterattack. He just took it back and, very carefully, tucked both hands between his legs, cradling himself. His breath came quick and shallow, almost a pant, and his eyes were wet with tears.

I leaned down, keeping my tone conversational. “Now, I wouldn’t like you to kid yourself that I’ve just been lucky and caught you off guard, because we both know that isn’t true, don’t we?”

He managed a weak nod. The action shook loose a couple of tears, which tracked down the sides of his nose and dripped to the ground.

“Good,” I said, still calm and pleasant. “So, we’re going to leave now and you’re going to crawl back to whatever hole you came out of and you’re going to stay there, aren’t you?”

Another feeble nod.

“Good boy,” I said encouragingly. I held the captured knife up in front of his face and watched the fear sharpen into focus as it caught his attention. “Because if you don’t, next time we meet I’m not just going to kick you in the bollocks, I’m going to cut them off, is that clear?”

“Y-yeah!” he yelped.

I straightened up, jerking my head to Trey. He picked up the fallen money and the towel I’d dropped, then stood looking down at the skinny kid for a moment, his face expressionless.

“OK, let’s go,” I said gently. We carried on along the beach, leaving our would-be robber behind us, crying quietly into the sand.

We kept walking, away from the campfire and the brightness of the big hotels and towards what looked like a residential area. Trey was quiet as we trudged along. I left him to work out what it was he wanted to say.

My heartrate was slowing to its normal level, the tension going out of my body now.

After I’d left the army I’d taught self-defence classes to women. Dealing with a situation like the one presented by the skinny kid and his mate was exactly the kind of thing I’d covered, week in and week out, for the best part of four years. There was no way he could have known that, so he’d woefully underestimated me.

Sometimes that was annoying, being mistaken for less than I was, but at others I had to admit that it came in very handy.

“Why didn’t you shoot him?” Trey asked suddenly.

“What?”

“You had a gun,” Trey said, sounding petulant, as though I’d somehow cheated, “so why didn’t you just, like, shoot him?”

“I’ve already shot my quota of people for today,” I said, flippant.

I heard his breath huff out.

“Look, Trey, it’s not as simple as that,” I said. “What if he’d had a gun, too? Suddenly we’re in the middle of another shoot-out. If you pull a gun, you have to be prepared to use it. I wasn’t – not against a couple of chancers like those two. Besides anything else, I don’t have the ammo to spare. And if I’d just threatened them with the gun I’m sure they would have remembered us. This way, well, I don’t think matey-boy’s going to be in a hurry to go round telling anyone he’s just had his arse kicked by a girl, do you?”

“No, I guess not,” Trey said. A slow smile spread across his face as the truth of it dawned on him. “‘Sides, man, it wasn’t his ass you kicked.”

***

We found a secluded space by the side of a pair of weather beaten wooden steps that led up into the dunes and that’s where we spread out our beach towels for the night. I’d seen the amount of tyre tracks all over the place and I didn’t want to put us somewhere we were likely to be run down in our sleep.

Trey rolled himself up in his towel and went out like he’d taken a punch, leaving me to lie awake listening to the relentless sea and the noises of the insects clicking incessantly into the night, and to think about the fact that I’d killed a man.

Now the immediate dangers were past, that inescapable fact surfaced again. I replayed it over and over. Saw in minute detail the Buick slewing to a stop, the guy in the passenger seat putting his left hand on the A pillar to pull himself out of the car, the gun levelling in his right, the clenched concentration in his face.

I tried to remember my own emotions, to put my actions down to extreme fear, or anger. Anything but the cold calm deliberation with which I’d shot him. In the end I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t blame heat for what I’d done because, in truth, beyond a determination not to let them get to us first, I hadn’t felt anything at all.

Nothing.

So what did that make me?

Maybe it was partly down to my familiarity with guns. I associated them with sport, with accuracy and skill more than death.

I’d been a first-class shot in the army, selected by my training instructors for the shooting teams in very short order. The first Skill At Arms meeting I’d done they’d brought me out almost as their secret weapon, gleeful as the scores came in for this unknown WRAC private. If I didn’t know better I’d almost say that most of the senior NCOs had put a bet on.

But target shooting was different. Targets fell, or developed holes. They didn’t bleed. They didn’t scream. And they didn’t die.

It wasn’t until I’d gone for Special Forces training that my temperament had been recognised for what it was. By Sean, of course. He’d been one of my sergeants then and he’d always seen too much. I suddenly remembered a conversation I’d had with him the year before, when we’d met again for the first time since the army.

“You were one of the best shots with a pistol I’ve ever come across, Charlie. Cool-headed. Deadly.”

“There were plenty who were just as good.”

He’d shaken his head. “A lot of people had a reasonable ability to aim. That doesn’t mean they’d got the stomach to pull the trigger for real. Not like you, Charlie. You had what it took. Still do, at a guess.”

I’d refuted it at the time, hadn’t wanted to admit he might have been right. Events in Germany had made any arguments I might have come up with redundant. I’d finally accepted that an ability to kill was part of me and I’d better learn to live with it if I didn’t want it to destroy me. Becoming a bodyguard had seemed the best way to channel such a talent, if that’s what it was.

Maybe curse would be a better description.

Trey shifted and mumbled in his sleep. Not surprising that he would have bad dreams after what he’d seen today. I watched him for a moment, but he didn’t wake.

I didn’t like him, I admitted to myself, dispassionate. When all was said and done he was just a spoilt bratty kid and I hated spoilt bratty kids. In normal circumstance I wouldn’t have crossed the road to spit on him if he’d been on fire.

Odd then, that my chosen new profession meant I was now supposed to lay down my life, if necessary, to protect him.

***

Next morning – Friday – I woke with the sunrise. My body clock was still partly tuned to UK time, running some five hours ahead.

I sat up with a groan. You think sand is nice and soft until you try spending the night with nothing between you and it except a towel. My hips creaked and grated every time I moved and I realised I should have dug hollows under them. Ah well, maybe next time.

The sun was cranking up slowly from beyond the far horizon, casting the sky with a stunning wash of pinks and pale blues. I sat, wrapped in my towel against the early chill and watched it climb steadily over the teeming bird life.

All along the shore line quick little piebald wading birds darted into the bubbling water as the sea advanced and retreated, nipping at the wet sand. The seagulls seemed like slow bruisers by comparison, lurking with their thumbs in their pockets, looking for trouble. Across the tops of the swells a strung-out flight of pelicans cruised effortlessly, as though they were air surfing just for the fun of it.

Trey was still spark out and I let him sleep, but I wasn’t the only one awake early. Lots of people were out for their morning exercise along the beach. In the golden dawn light they looked aggressively healthy as they power-walked briskly past us, elbows pumping. Most were elderly, dressed in shorts, pale shirts and those tinted sunshades that golfers wear. Nearly all were carrying insulated mugs. I smelt their coffee, and was envious.

Not everybody was in a hurry. One young couple wandered at the waterline, hand in hand, soaking up the primitive peace of the sun’s ascent. I thought of the couple at the motel, pointlessly slaughtered, and it set up a dull aching pain behind my breastbone.

Strange how I could feel more distress at the deaths of two people where I’d been little more than a bystander, rather than the one where I’d actually pulled the trigger myself.

Now, the couple paused a little way off to my right with the waves lapping gently at their ankles. They turned their faces towards the sea and embraced. I shifted my gaze, unwilling to intrude.

I suppose there’d been a time, once, when I’d wondered if that would ever be Sean and me – strolling barefoot on a subtropical beach at sunrise. Instead we’d spent more time with our backs to the wall, fighting for our lives. Violence, mostly not of our own making, had always seemed to come between us.

We’d come back from Germany after New Year, though, with the air clearer than it had ever been, promising we’d try again from the beginning. No more baggage.

And we had, to a certain extent.

The first time Sean and I had got together we’d rushed into a wild and passionate affair that had self-destruct written all over it. Sure enough, it had ended in disaster for both of us.

This time around, he’d taken his time, courted me, and I’d been bemused to discover he had a gentle thoughtful side I’d never previously suspected. It didn’t fit with everything I’d ever known of Sean. It had made me hesitate.

Looking back over the past few months I realised that I’d been holding back, hoping for something that would lend substance to my caution. Failing to find it had only made me more wary, as though I’d been afraid that he was too good to be true.

And then, only the day before yesterday, I’d let my guard down just long enough for Sean to slip through, under my skin again. It had been every bit as magical as I’d recollected. Every bit as magical as I’d feared it couldn’t be.

And now it looked as though circumstances had brought our fledgling relationship to an end in the most final way possible.

I glanced over at Trey, the cause of all this. Drool stringed from his slack mouth. He was beginning to stir, rolling over onto his back with a short grunt like a sleeping dog. As I watched, his eyes fluttered open, squinting against the sunlight.

He struggled into a sitting position, scratching at his neck as he yawned and stretched. The hair sprang up around the back of his head in tufts.

“What’s up?” he said, rubbing at his face, his voice thick with sleep. “You were looking at me kinda weird.”

“Nothing.” I said, turning my face away. I indicated the vista with my hand and added with a touch of irony. “Another day in paradise.”

A flash of black and white further down the beach caught my eye. Tense, I got quickly to my feet, shaking the sand out of my towel. “Time to go,” I said abruptly.

“Aw man, what’s the hurry?” He stared up at me, not moving. “It’s early. We ain’t gonna meet up with the guys ‘til gone eleven.”

“That’s as maybe,” I said, keeping my voice low, “but there’s a pair of cops over there, checking IDs of all the kids sleeping on the beach.”

I’d tried to keep my body language casual, but Trey immediately spun round, staring at the two cops. They were wheeling mountain bikes through the sand. I’d always thought the cosy image of the local bobby on his bike belonged firmly in the leafy villages of Agatha Christie’s England. Looks like I’d been wrong.

These two looked nothing like familiar English coppers. Both men were wearing cycling shorts, gunbelts and trendy sunglasses. The image of Oakley man momentarily overlaid on top of them, sending my pulse soaring.

The pair handed ID back to the group of kids they’d been talking to and started moving towards us. They were barely thirty metres away. I cursed my own lack of attention, that I hadn’t spotted them earlier.

“You reckon they’re looking for us?” Trey asked, jumping to his feet now, nervous.

“Best not to find out, don’t you think?” I murmured.

The only immediate way off the beach was the set of wooden steps we’d slept alongside. Trey snatched up his towel and I led the way up the short flight. I concentrated on breathing evenly, trying not to make it look as though we were in a hurry, or running away. Difficult, when we were doing both.

In the dim light of the night before I’d thought the steps were simply a way up onto the dunes, but once we were at the top in daylight, I could see they actually led to someone’s private garden.

In front of us was a scrappy lawn of tough-looking grass punctuated by stubby palms at the borders. The trees had all grown leaning away from the beach and the prevailing wind. It wasn’t a big area, not like the garden of the Pelzners’ rented mansion back in Fort Lauderdale, but it had a lived-in feel. A child’s plastic slide sat on a paved patio closer to the house, with a brightly-coloured football and a mini trampoline.

The house itself was low and squat and painted white, battered by its proximity to the sea and the salt. A trellis of rust trails ran down the walls from every metal fixing. Almost the whole of the wall facing the ocean was made of glass that tilted downwards, presumably to fend off the glare from the water. I didn’t know much about real estate prices in Daytona Beach, but if the view alone counted for anything, then this was right up there. Until the next hurricane hit, of course.

The two cops had almost reached the foot of the steps. They were studying Trey and me, trying to work out if we belonged in the garden, or if they had a good enough reason to follow us up.

“Keep walking towards the house,” I whispered to the kid. I let my gaze scan casually across the cops, nodded and gave them a smile and a cheery wave. Failing to make eye contact doesn’t work with people who’ve been trained to spot someone acting shifty.

I turned back towards the house, then swore softly under my breath as a grey-haired woman in a loose sacky dress appeared at one of the windows. She stilled, narrowing her eyes and sticking her chin out as though she needed glasses to positively identify us as strangers at that distance.

I glanced round, making the pretence of pointing out a diving pelican to Trey. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the cops lean his bike against the stair rail and put his foot on the first step. His partner stayed on the beach.

A trickle of sweat ran between my shoulder blades. I hunched them, feeling the SIG dig into the back of my belt. The knife I’d taken from the skinny kid the night before weighed heavy in my shorts’ pocket.

Oh shit . . .

“Morning, officers,” said a man’s deep voice at that moment. “Can I help you boys?”

We all turned to find a slim elderly man with a neatly trimmed white van Dyke beard approaching up the beach, his stride long and rangy. He wore a battered Panama hat and a very faded T-shirt that had once advertised the 1989 Daytona 500. In his right hand he carried a bulging string bag.

“Oh hi, Walt, how you doing today?” said the cop who’d been about to climb up after us. He turned and stepped down onto the beach again.

“I’m doing good, Mikey,” the old guy said. “So, you boys smell breakfast cooking, or what?”

“No.” The cop laughed and shook his head. “You have folk visiting?” And he nodded in our direction.

Walt looked up then from under the brim of the Panama and a pair of piercing grey eyes under bushy eyebrows locked onto mine, straight and steady. I stared back at him and tried to impart pleading and desperation. I suppose there was a certain amount of fear there, too.

For what I’d have to do if he said no.

For a long moment, Walt didn’t move, then he gave me an almost imperceptible nod. “Yeah,” he said, his voice was slow and rolling, like he was reading a story on the radio. “You guys hungry?” he called to us. “Harriet’s making her special blueberry pancakes.”

I checked the house again. The old woman had moved to the open doorway now. She was standing just behind the mosquito screen, looking anxious.

Walt climbed the steps and came towards us. He paused a few strides away to turn and wave a small salute to the police. The cop he’d called Mikey waved back and collected his bike. The pair of them began to move off.

Walt watched them go, then turned back to us. Close to, I could see the bag he’d been carrying was filled with seashells.

“So,” he said calmly, “can I ask you folks what you’re doing in my back yard?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “we made a mistake – took a wrong turn. We were just looking for the way off the beach and—”

I broke off as Walt’s wildly sprouting eyebrows did a strange jiggle of surprise. “English, huh?” he said. “I have a daughter went to college over there – Manchester. You know it?” He pronounced the name with all the emphasis on the Man, like it was two words.

“Erm, yeah, I’m from that part of the country. My mother and father still live near Manchester,” I said, grasping at the association. I thought of my parents’ substantial Georgian house in the stockbroker belt of Cheshire and reckoned that my mother would faint at the suggestion that they were anywhere near the outskirts of the city itself, but they weren’t here to contradict me.

Walt beamed. “Well, that’s just great,” he said. “Why don’t you both come inside and you can tell Harriet and me all about Manchester while we have a bite of breakfast.”

“Oh really, sir, we couldn’t put you out like that,” I said quickly, even though my empty stomach was already grumbling at the mention of those blueberry pancakes.

“No, no,” Walt said. “It’s no trouble. Harriet always cooks for a full house. That woman could feed a battleship. There’ll be waffles, bacon, eggs, hash browns . . .”

He let his voice trail off artfully, those canny eyes shifting between the two of us. The expression on Trey’s face was so pained at my continued resistance to food it was almost comical.

I flicked my eyes past him. The two cops were still in sight, stopping someone else further along the beach. I looked back and found Walt had been watching me carefully.

I smiled back at him. “Well, if you’re sure, then that’s very kind of you, sir,” I said. “We’d love to stay for breakfast.”